


you inspired a fire

by Lessandra



Category: A Few Good Men (1992)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Military Homophobia, i mean this is like before DADT times so, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4620108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lessandra/pseuds/Lessandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They call him ‘Smiling’ Jack Ross,” Sam tells him, or maybe it’s Captain Whitaker. “He’s always wearing a smile leaving the courthouse. Never loses. So good luck trying to beat him in court.”</p><p>He’s smiling when they first meet. <em>Jack Ross. Dan Kaffee.</em> First handshakes and introductions as they seize each other up. His handshake is like the rest of him: dry and confident and just a pinch of uptight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you inspired a fire

**Author's Note:**

> This, I believe, is gonna be of interest to exactly three people. Myself. My best friend who casually hinted to me, _You know, I accidentally rewatched “A Few Good Men”, and let met tell you, Tom Cruise and Kevin Bacon, there’s just something there..._ And the unknown contributor to the HoYay part of this movie's page over on TvTropes. Or, I don't know, maybe the readership will surprise me.

They are waiting for him on the courthouse’s steps, the both of them, and it’s a little strange not to have any instructions to give to them anymore, and he is filled with a sort of disappointed relief and underwhelming emptiness, now that he’s out of the clutches of this case.

“How about a little celebration, huh, Sam?”

“Can’t,” Sam says with that smile that Danny knows means he’s about to say something about his family. “Gotta go home. Talk to my daughter.”

“She say anything yet?” he snorts.

“Sure. Read through half of the Collins dictionary while I was tied up here, I bet.” He nods his _see you tomorrow_ ’s at the both of them, and Danny turns to Jo. She is watching him with a curious expression.

“How about it then?” he asks, and she nods curtly, awkwardly.

Truthfully, privately, he did imagine this win, this day, and them drunk on power, and then drunk on spectacularly expensive and excellent booze.

But then Dawson and Downey are dishonorably discharged, and they are left with a bitter aftertaste of sobriety and consequence in their mouths, and it chases him and Jo all evening as they dine and talk.

When they are walking down the pier, Danny leans in to kiss her. It seems like she’s expecting it, like this is something they’ve been building up to, the tense anger in their guts at each other’s edges having dissipated into dependable solidarity, but maybe that’s not enough, and maybe it’s still that bitter aftertaste—and Jo knows that he’s got no sobriety and a hell of a lot of consequences to offer.

She turns her head just a little, and his lips slide over her cheek. It’s almost like she is going to let them pretend that it’s all it was going to be, but she is too brutally honest for that, gratingly, maddeningly so, and he still wants to shake her a little for her need to be so blunt all the time, and laugh at her until he cries.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Danny,” Jo says, because she needs to be sure that he knows it too.

“Yeah, no, yeah,” he nods, somewhat embarrassed, and at the same time startled to discover he isn’t disappointed. “Sorry,” he says, because he probably should be. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Danny,” she says admonishingly because she doesn’t believe he isn’t “just saying that”.

“I’m gonna head home,” he says quickly, because the sooner this blunder is over and behind them the better. “Get started on my next case. I’ll see you around the HQ.”

He tries not to feel like he’s fleeing, and tries not to feel like a fool, and hopes that he’ll remember this day for his triumphs without this sticking out like a sore thumb.

 

 

~***~

 

 

Kendrick’s court-martial is done quietly, the verdict understandably pre-determined, and Jack doesn’t have to be there for it to go smoothly but he sees it through. He always sees everything through.

Danny’s sitting in the audience, and at one point Kendrick spots him, or maybe has spotted him a while ago, but that’s when he chooses to look, and Danny remembers that stare, filled to the brim with vehemence and defiance. He has already been on the receiving end of it when he drilled Kendrick about the Code Red. It probably says something truly dickish about him that he can’t keep his face straight and leers, grins back at Kendrick in petty triumph.

“Lieutenant?” Jack calls for his attention loudly and follows his line of sight, spots Danny there and seems briefly surprised, but then it’s gone. Kendrick visibly winces though. Everyone present here knows: today’s the last day he’s gonna be called that rank.

After the trial’s concluded, and they lead him away, and they call him _Mr. Kendrick_ now, Danny shuffles over towards Jack’s table.

“Enjoying the show?” Jack asks, knowing it is him without turning.

“I don’t know, it’s been pretty underwhelming,” Danny says breezily.

“Well. He’s not Jessup.” Jack turns to him and Danny makes a show of studying his face until Jack shifts uncomfortably. “What?”

“Just looking for traces of make-up or, I don’t know, trying to figure out if Kendrick gave you a shiner, or something, when you arrested him.”

Jack scoffs. “I’m afraid he was underwhelming in that instance too,” he says.

They walk to their usual joint, and Danny makes him relive all the details, which Jack doesn’t really understand, it’s an unexceptional story to him, nothing to get gleeful about. But Danny’s still rocking on the ripples of his triumph.

“God, I would have expected him to _seethe_ at you or something. Doesn’t he look like a snake?”

Jack snorts, surprised, and shakes his head.

“And then what?” Danny prods.

“ _Nothing_. I don’t know what you’re expecting. He didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, we rode back in silence. He was just… angry.”

“Ah, beautiful,” Danny sags in his seat in relief and revel, kicks his head back with a grin.

“Can I please finish eating now?” Jack asks dryly.

“Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.” Danny straightens back to what’s humanly appropriate, grabs his shades from the table and begins to rise, but pauses and seizes Jack up, still overcome with this bouncy flippancy and a need to say something witty and a little bit thorny.

“Were you worried about me?” he asks. “You were. Weren’t you? No need to hide it. I noticed you breaking character there a little bit.”

Still riding the last waves of his triumph, still drinking up the last remnants of attention he’s going to get.

Jack chews silently, and arches an eyebrow at him, which says more about how unimpressed he is with Danny at this moment than if he did speak.

“You’re the actor, Kaffee,” he says eventually. “Not me.”

“You were _worried_ ,” Danny decides, like Jack confirmed something for him.

“Sorry, let me correct myself. I meant to say _asshole,_ not _actor._ ”

“This asshole will see you Friday on the field, and I will wipe the ground with you,” Danny says, rising to his feet.

Jack doesn’t look up from his plate. “I tremble with fear.”

 

 

~***~

 

 

On Friday, the JAG team beats the Marines, and Danny still feels like soaring, still feels like climbing on the very top and screaming, _I’m the king of the world!_ like a college douchebag he still remembers being so viscerally.

“Oh, don’t look now, Jack, but you are beginning to _su-uck_ at this game,” he says, putting his hands up around his mouth like he means to shout.

Jack bends, catching his breath, and gives him a nasty glare from underneath his brow. “Yeah yeah. Wake me when Sherby learns to catch the ball.” He straightens up, looks a bit contemptuous despite his loss. “You got lucky, Kaffee.”

“Aw, it was cute, don’t worry,” Danny grins in response. “Really adorable. How you _almost_ won. How you tried _so_ hard.” He makes baby fists out of his hands and mimics crying. His team is whooping in the background.

Jack waves his hand at him silently, but his face says, _I am going to kick your ass, you cocky bastard,_ and Danny laughs, exhilarated by the prospect.

“Face it,” he says instead of stopping. “You can’t beat me. I won one over you in court. Won one over you in the field.”

Jack says nothing to that, but he looks less exhilarated, looks downright pissed, and Danny doesn’t care, he’s flying in his head, and his team pulls him back, there are punches and shouting, and someone opens a can of beer and dumps it all over his head, and it’s not until Danny sees Jack’s figure retreating out of the corner of his eye that he disengages and catches up with him, overturning his last words in his head and them suddenly not sitting right.

“Jack?”

Jack nods at his friends to move along without him and turns to Danny, arms folded on his chest. “What, Kaffee, you didn’t rub it in enough?”

Danny wants to feel nothing but sheepish, but there’s a spoonful of shameful bitterness in his glee now. He shouldn’t have said it, and it’s so stupid to bring it up now, Jo must be rubbing off on him, her and her straightforwardness of a freight train. “We’re good, right?” he says. “You’re not mad at me? Are you? That I won the case? And the—right now?” he waves his hand inarticulately.

Jack raises his eyebrows in astonishment. “You’re kidding,” he says. “Are you really fishing for another compliment here?”

“No, I’m serious!” He licks his lips and tries to find better words to elaborate but can’t.

Jack strolls up to him, and suddenly he’s fucking tall and in his face, which makes Danny scowl a little, he hates being reminded of his unremarkable height.

“You think you worry me, Kaffee? _You?_ ” And something about the way he says it makes Danny flush. Jack chuckles. “And anyway. Your life’s gonna be hell now that you’re on everyone’s radar. Good luck with that, by the way. I don’t envy you.”

He puts his finger against Danny’s chest and when Danny looks down, Jack tweaks his nose, and Danny snorts, feeling like a fucking idiot.

Jack starts walking away again, but then stops and tosses over his shoulder, “Kaffee? Welcome to the big leagues.”

And Danny laughs. That conversation seems now like it happened ages ago, and he was a different man then. He shoots Jack a smirk and a playful salute.

 

 

~***~

 

 

“They call him ‘Smiling’ Jack Ross,” Sam tells him, or maybe it’s Captain Whitaker. “He’s always wearing a smile leaving the courthouse. Never loses. So good luck trying to beat him in court.”

He’s smiling when they first meet. _Jack Ross. Dan Kaffee._ First handshakes and introductions as they seize each other up. His handshake is like the rest of him: dry and confident and just a pinch of uptight.

“You play, Lieutenant?” Danny asks, instead of any questions pertinent to the case.

Jack looks momentarily surprised before it washes away, wrestled under control of his facial muscles. Later, Danny will figure out that Jack doesn’t blink wrong if he hasn’t planned it. Every prolonged surprise, or smile, or anything else—that’s only because Jack wants you to see it. Whether that’s because he _is_ , after all, a bit of an actor, (and as far as Danny is concerned, all lawyers are,) or if Jack allows it with him because they’re sort of maybe friends—well, the jury’s still out on that one.

“Sure,” Jack tells him. “Basketball.”

“Softball?” Danny probes, and grins when Jack nods. “How about a friendly match this weekend? Your guys, my guys… Losers buy the drinks, and we can talk shop after?”

“ _Winners_ buy the drinks,” Jack says. “People who win usually get into a bit of a spending spirit.” He smiles and looks dangerous when he does. “And Kaffee? Your guys don’t have to bring their wallets.”

“Oh! Oh we’ll bring ‘em. And a month worth of pay to spend. There’s gonna be so much booze your liver is gonna sue you.”

Jack laughs. And come Saturday afternoon beats his team effortlessly. And he was right, they do feel like buying, and Danny finds a little consolation and fairness in it, and that’s also how he first knows that Jack Ross really _gets_ people.

They decide on a settlement, and Danny doesn’t know what Whitaker was trying to scare him about, (or was it Sam?) it is all perfectly reasonable, and everybody’s happy, and continues to be happy, and they play softball, and sometimes Danny’s team wins, and sometimes it’s Jack’s, and they never, ever go to court.

(Sometimes it nags at him, the little voice that tells him he’d lose on that playing field for sure. But he’s not passionate enough about being a lawyer to care or to try and prove anything.)

 

 

~***~

 

 

He closes the case of Staff Sergeant Henry Williamson who went to the movies on the company time in a matter of two days. It’s a leftover that got assigned to him while he was still working the Dawson and Downey case. After that he is hit with heavier stuff. Investigates the death of a naval officer at sea, and an F-14 malfunction that smacks of sabotage and foul play. Jo helps out too, on a sporadic basis.

Then another case brings him toe to toe with Ross once again. A Navy old timer making a bad call, shooting preemptively at an aircraft in a contested airspace thinking they were gonna fire, when it was probably his own damn itchy trigger finger and they wouldn’t have.

“So he thought the other guy was gonna fire. You can’t prove or disprove an opinion,” Jack says as they sit in his office. “We’ve got nothing other than his gut to go on here, and that, I’m sorry, is not enough. He’s facing a dishonorable discharge if he pleads not guilty.” And he’s not being an asshole, there, he’s probably right. “Plead guilty. Black mark on his service record is gonna go over easier.”

“He will not go down without a fight.”

“You’re his lawyer. Convince him.”

“Yeah, I think he will probably fire me if I suggest it. And carve out my kidney.”

Jack snorts and shakes his head impatiently. “Come on, Kaffee.” He’s tossing a tennis ball against the wall repetitively. “Take the deal.”

Danny opens his mouth to agree, and then freezes, and he honest to God cannot tell anymore if it’s still his knee-jerk reaction, or if it’s really what’s best for the case.

“I’m not backing down,” he says quietly.

Jack frowns. “What the hell are you talking about, Kaffee, take the damn deal, it’s the best your client’s getting, and you know it.”

“No, I _know_ , but—” Danny stops himself and groans. “ _Yes,_ ” he resumes, a little slower, “I’ll take the deal, but. That’s not me backing down, it really _is_ my best option. Right?”

Jack keeps frowning at him. “Are you asking me, or telling me?”

“I’m—” he pauses again, and doesn’t know which answer is the right one.

Looks at Jack and thinks how ridiculously small and exasperatingly amusing he must have seemed to him, with his peacocking and _“you’ll go blind on paperwork”_ trademark remark that Jack must have heard a thousand times over from the mouths of ten thousands Kaffees. He was good, sure, and known for it, but he was small fish, so fucking ridiculously small he’s blushing to remember how much self-important bravado he had for someone so stupidly insignificant.

“I was really out of your league, wasn’t I?” he says.

Jack, bless him, knows immediately where Danny’s train of thought has ended up. “No,” he says calmly. “You’re a good lawyer, Danny. I always knew that. But I also knew you weren’t really serious about being one. No shame in that.”

“Well you better watch out now,” Danny says in a dignified tone, trying not to look too embarrassed. “I’m going to the matrasses from now on.”

Jack laughs and raises his hands in mock defeat. “Easy, tiger. You’re taking the deal, or aren’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m taking the damn deal,” Danny grumbles. “You’re ruining my streak of wins.”

Jack doesn’t point out that Danny doesn’t actually has a streak of wins, he hasn’t been to court since then, not yet, and he gives him one of his exasperated glances instead. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the arraignment,” he says, and Danny smiles at him, because with Jack the words feel a little bit like kinship.

 

 

~***~

 

 

He remembers a lazy day at the office the first week he’s here. It’s a hot summer, and the autumn will bring a collective sigh of relief to everybody. For now, the heat is unbearable, and the air feels like fucking soup. A bird right outside is making an annoying sound but they can’t shut the window on her.

“I spy something red,” Quinn says, and another lieutenant follows the direction of his gaze and wolf-whistles. “Oh yeah!” he seconds, and Danny remembers a sluggish thought passing through his head, wondering if they are talking about a woman or a _car_.

“I spy something blue,” Picard rebuts, and for a few minutes they do it back and forth, stirring themselves out of this lethargic sweltering, loosening up like rusty joints.

“I spy something green,” Sam says, and Danny twists his neck, his eyes roaming around the room before he gives up and says, “You’re getting myopic, old man, there’s nothing green here.”

“You are,” Sam says, deadpan, the fucking bastard, and the others laugh, and Danny sputters and snorts.

_Walked right into that one._

It’s something that hangs around and in between of his every conversation with Jack, too, he supposes. Greenhorn. Fresh meat. Rookie. Arrogant and self-important, in a way that twists many people into sharp and angry shapes, but not Jack Ross. Jack Ross isn’t phased by his ego trips and the teasing he can’t quite contain, is exasperatedly amused by him, perhaps, and it’s not until the words, _No, you’re a good lawyer,_ said in a tone that holds him up like a friendly shoulder, that the knot of unease finally untangles in Danny’s chest.

 

 

~***~

 

 

He hesitates to say if it’s the fact that he has confronted his chickenshit cowardice in this bar, just around the corner of the Halls of Justice, frequented by all sorts of lawyers, bad and good, but he develops a distinct dislike for the place. Possibly because the bad type is prevalent, the brash and cocky and arrogant type—what _he_ used to be, and still a little bit is, and doesn’t like being reminded of it.

They sit around the counter and around the tables and they discuss court-martials and reduced sentences like it is nothing more remarkable than the beer they’re slurping up. They eat, and drink, and hit on girls, or measure the length of their dicks and the strength of their balls, and speak with careless ease about laws that break men’s lives, and Danny picks at his plate, stirs the drink in his glass that he will not be finishing, and thinks about his latest case: a boy who went into the service just to please his father, and was too ashamed to face him after his failures, and ate a bullet rather than appear in court. Thinks about the man burying his son, desolate in his grief.

Jack spots him moping there as he himself is heading back to court. He silently drags Danny with him, not offering any explanations, just nodding a _Come with me,_ and Danny’s not sure if he’s being invited or ordered.

He doesn’t ask what the hell Jack thinks he’s doing: the man’s mind is a twisted labyrinth to him on a good day, and Jack would hardly feel like explaining himself anyway—more like look at Danny impatiently, with that level stare like he sees right through him and is wondering a bit about how slow Danny can be.

They walk into a courtroom and sit in the back. It’s not Jack’s case, it turns out, he has brought them there to witness something. The man on trial is a drill instructor at an enlisted boot camp and he has staged an accident for a recruit that wasn’t cutting it for him. “We’re looking for a few good men,” he says, unremorseful. “So maybe they will be fewer men, but the remaining will only be the good ones.”

Danny’s watching him with open hostility, thinks of Jessup again and wonders if it will always be Jessup he circles back to, if in a few years he’ll demonize the man beyond belief when all that he deserves is to be forgotten and put out of mind.

“How do you guys miss it,” he says quietly. “It’s a wonder that asshole hasn’t run anyone else into the ground, jeez, they ought to throw away the fucking key on him when they lock him up.”

He looks at Jack and falls silent, because Jack is wearing a painful expression, one that seems familiar, and Danny realizes that he must be thinking of Jessup too. It’s the expression he had after Jessup’s furious confession, when Danny turned to him, and said his name, and Jack looked lost and ashamed, and Danny remembers wondering, however briefly, if Jack has ever felt this much disappointment in anyone.

This man’s no Jessup. He’s no Colonel of the Marine Corps. But Jack’s eyes are filled with the same disappointment and his mouth twists in as much disdain.

“Why did you bring me there?” Danny asks afterwards, astonished and a little angry.

“You seemed like you needed to get your mind off of things,” Jack says.

“Wow. Excellent choice. I am definitely super distracted now, not gonna be thinking about much else other than that poor recruit, thanks,” Danny’s voice is dripping with caustic sarcasm.

Jack chuckles, short and breathless, more of an exhale than a laugh. “Maybe I needed to keep my mind off of it too,” he says unhappily.

And, well, Danny can’t really joke about that.

“It’s not all like that. You gotta understand that, right?”

Danny peers at him curiously, not following. Jack sighs, and there it is, that irritation about everyone being so slow, and Danny offers him a small reflexive smile.

“I hate that there are people like that in the Corps, is what I’m saying. That’s not what we’re about.”

And Danny’s reminded of Jack’s angrily narrowed eyes, and the _“Don’t you dare lump me in with Jessup and Markinson and Kendrick because we wear the same uniform,”_ his outrage contained but there, deep down, and for a second he just stares at Jack stupidly. Months of trying to figure out where the frailness of Jack’s ego is, and oh, look at that, he’s found it, it’s in the grasp of his hand.

“Of course,” is all he says simply, letting his elbow bump Jack’s bony ribs. “What am I, some kind of an idiot? Well, actually, hm—” he plays the fool theatrically, grins at Jack mischievously, and Jack makes a sound between a snort and a sigh, and maybe a groan, too, but he’s not tense anymore. Danny bumps him again with a smile, which earns him a forceful shove back.

At home he’s pouring over his case again, swings his bat lightly in the empty room as he composes arguments in his head, and maybe he does think better with it because it occurs to him suddenly, many hours later, that Jack’s not the Kendrick-type to bare teeth at any comment made against the Corps, he would ignore a fool. What he was asking, what he wanted to hear, is that Danny knows the difference.

It’s a little confounding, this thought, and it fills him with smugness and relief—to know that he’s not the only one here afraid to look like a total fucking asshole. That Jack gets that way too.

 

 

~***~

 

 

“How do you find anything in here?” Jo complains, looking around what Danny considers generously his office space, but no sane person’s generosity is that boundless.

“I know where everything is,” he shrugs lazily, looking around at the chaotic mess of folders of different color. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“The Louson case transcripts.”

“Mmhm,” he hums, remembering, and then springs up from the sofa. “Hang on. Right. I remember. It’s. Uh.” He checks one pile, then another. “Just a second,” he promises, and produces the folder from the third one, hands it over triumphantly.

Jo gives him an incredulous look. “Amazing,” she says flatly and accepts the folder. “I sure hope that when you get married, your wife will keep things in order.”

“Uh, well, since you’re not her, be sure to put it back into the same pile please when you’re done?” Danny says, sprawling on the sofa again, his own case files covering him like an apron, and smiles at her brilliantly when she gives him an angry, disbelieving look.

“And what’s with your socks?” she scoffs finally, after giving him a once-over.

Danny looks at his feet, surprised. One of his socks is mint green, with purple and pink patterns. The other is orange with blue triangles. He flexes his toes and shrugs, feels stupid to explain it out loud, even though the truth should be patently obvious to her. Especially because it should be obvious, and she has remarked on it before, so doesn’t she know already? That’s just the type of guy he is.

The type to make crude jokes when she’s trying to talk to him about a case, and to make foolish remarks when lives are on the line. The type to pick up the gravitas of any situation with a dustpan and throw it out the window.

And it pleases him, just that tiny satisfying bit, that when he’s wearing a proper two-piece, or dress blues, or dress whites, that hidden from everybody’s gaze, inside his prim polished black shoes his socks are fucking green. They’re fucking green, they’re violet, they’re yellow.

 

 

~***~

 

 

“There’s scuttlebutt going around that some asshole has aided and abetted a criminal in a hostage situation,” Jack tells him, catching him in the halls of the Judge Advocacy HQ, and looks him up and down. “Helped fulfil his demands, believed his bleeding-heart bullshit, some nonsense like that.”

Danny smiles at him broadly. “Well, you know how scuttlebutt is,” he says evasively.

“Usually true?” Jack arches an eyebrow, not backing down.

“Damn straight.” He’s grinning now, and his heart feels too big for his chest.

“And yet you’re here,” Jack says, with a hint of irritation in his voice. “Bars still in place.”

“So it appears.”

He’s not averse to telling it to Jack straight. In fact, he’s quite looking forward to it. A grand and epic adventure, an ode to his derring-do. It’s just not cut and dry enough to be told quickly in a narrow and crowded corridor.

“You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are,” Jack says frostily.

Danny snorts. “So I keep hearing.”

Jack smiles sardonically, still irked, but the harshness in him is slowly easing up. He leans languidly against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “How is Commander Galloway these days?” A knowing smirk is twitching behind his lips.

Danny coughs. “How did you know it was her?”

“She isn’t fooled by your sleek charm,” Jack says conversationally.

Danny snorts and protests, “Neither is Sam,” but it’s a weak closing argument. Sam’s just cut from a different cloth.

“Sam’s a kinder man than us,” Jack says, as if having read his mind.

Danny laughs sharply. “Isn’t he just.”

“So, what happened with that hostage?”

Danny grins. “Tell you over drinks later?”

After a momentary pause Jack nods, doing his best to appear unenthusiastic.

“And Jack? You really should stop worrying about me so. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“I guess I really do,” Jack says calmly, even a little grimly, and Danny blinks, confused and a little startled, because he meant it as a cheap shot, meant for it to be way off the mark, and he can’t say if Jack’s doing deadpan or really fucking serious right now.

The thing about Danny and friendship is that neither Sam nor Jo liked him right off the bat, but when they did, Danny can at least understand that. Sam’s a worldly guy, he’s older, wiser, married, and he’s got one of the sharpest minds Danny knows underneath all that inertia. He saw a brown-nosing snotty brat at first, but then he saw right through that brat, and it all evened out. Jo saw his cheerful swagger, and moves that he’d like to imagine were smooth, and _Wow. I’m sexually aroused, Commander,_ which, yeah, so he could be kind of a pig. But they come from the same place: both trying to prove everything to the world, and both being ardent idealists about it, too, only she’s not hiding hers. Unlike some people.

Jack Ross, though. Danny doesn’t get Jack Ross, not any further than the obvious layer of a hotshot Marine lawyer, and his _no passion no prejudice_ motto. The person underneath is known to Danny mainly in bits and pieces, and it’s a pretty important piece to figure out that in Jack Ross’s book they are friends, and he apparently gives two shits about Danny fucking his career down the drain while being all over-confident and shit.

Danny’s not a guy to reminisce or do any deep soul-searching, but he’s thinking about it and how the hell it happened without him noticing for the rest of the day.

 

 

~***~

 

 

A Marine takes a shot at a Major. Served in Nam, maybe returned one egg short of a full basket, and _snap_. It lands on Danny’s desk, and he goes to investigate, and much to his surprise Jack tags along: says he knows the victim, or his friend, or something like that—honestly, Danny’s too surprised to have processed it properly, or to find a reason to object.

“Well, get your gear together,” he says, shaking it off. “I’m all ready to ride.”

Which earns him one of Jack’s impatient looks. “I’m a Marine, Kaffee. First to go. I’ve always got a bag packed in my trunk.”

“Huh,” Danny says, and battles the urge to make a pun about that _First to go_ comment. “All I got in my trunk is softball gear and golf clubs.”

On the ride over, Jack is tight and edgy. Always is when it comes to Marines that give the Corps a bad name, although he hides it well.

It’s too clean. So clean it’s filthy. Stinks of cover-ups and cowardice, of bleach that’s been generously poured over the place where blood has been. Everything tucked away, neat, and it creeps under his skin, but it’s hard to dig up the truth when everybody is stonewalling everybody.

At the end of the day they crash where the drinks are, both bonelessly tired. Unlike the D.C. there aren’t many uniforms here: the locals aren’t throwing them any warm welcomes.

Danny looks around. Listens to some girl’s awful attempts to sing to REO Speedwagon. A table full of soldiers laughs about their training, makes lewd jokes about waitresses and superior officers in one breath, a continuous guffaw of roaring laughter. Jack might have wanted to reprimand them about honor and duty if he were paying attention, but Danny knows they mean no harm and that he has been just like them. _Just like._

Jack shifts, and Danny’s eyes travel to him. They’re not talking, but it feels a little like they are, like they’re sharing something. He’s not a silent type, likes to let his tongue run loose, but he can appreciate this change of pace once in a while.

“Isn’t it nice to be on the winning side for once, huh, Jack?” He says lightly and finds he is too tired to even smirk properly. Feels like he’s been pounded by a battering ram, or ran a fucking Olympics, or both.

Jack turns to glare at him heavily, like he can’t decide if he should be affronted or amazed at how much of an asshole he is.

Danny’s smile turns a little wider. “Hey, I just mean, we’re on the same team. You know? _Our_ side’s definitely the winning one. So it’s nice to know that beforehand.”

Jack scoffs, and his whole face says _Right,_ in that very Jack Ross way when he doesn’t have to say anything but lets you know with the sheer amount of contempt on his face what he’s thinking. Danny grins.

“Hey, bartender!” someone yells in a very loud, slightly drunk voice that immediately sets off warning bells in his head. “Didn’t know you served pansies in here.”

Danny narrows his eyes and carefully turns his head and of course. Oh but of fucking course these rednecks mean them. _Him_. Because he’s wearing his whites no doubt. Faggoty, were they? He scowls. It irks him every time he puts them on, but he remembers that petty, the _pettiest_ of comments. He has never told Jack, for the ridiculous fear of being laughed at, but he too has always been proud to wear his uniform, and it burns in his stomach to think that some narrow-minded ass would step all over it just like that.

“What’re you looking at? Which are you anyway, the wife” the man demands. He is one of the locals, disgruntled with the Marines, and he is drunk off his ass.

Jack is very stiff beside him, like a crisp block of ice, but at that comments he finally turns his head and stares at Danny, and he looks honestly surprised for a moment, although Danny isn’t sure what he would find that shocking about it at this point in the conversation.

“Nothing,” he says out loud pleasantly. He’s been in a lot of bar fights, doesn’t shy away from them, but they have a job to do and he isn’t looking for one tonight. “Looking at nothing, gentlemen, we were just leaving. You wouldn’t hit a girl, would you?”

That makes the rednecks laugh because that is exactly what they think, what they want him to be, and _Run along, little piggy,_ and he takes the opportunity to make himself scarce, dragging Jack away with him.

Jack is still giving him an odd, sharp glance, one that Danny cannot decipher. Maybe he expected Danny to fight: he is after all kind of a hothead, and Jack has born his outbursts before. Maybe he _wanted_ Danny to fight after this particular instant.

“It’s my dress whites,” he volunteers. “And my womanly height. Makes me look very lady-like, or so I’ve been told.”

Jack makes a weird noise with his throat, like he means to tell him off maybe, invoke the favored traffic light euphemism and say, _Yellow light,_ as in _Shut up, Danny, you’re going too far._ It’s an admittedly hilarious and kindergarten way to deal with sex stuff—red to tell someone off, green to encourage—but it works for the military, so no one’s reinventing the wheel. Jack, in the end, volunteers nothing.

“Besides, between the two of us, I’m clearly more handsome. They just couldn’t handle it.”

Jack shakes his head and smiles, amused and surprised and finally relaxing, and it lands in Danny’s gut, makes him smile too.

They walk closely by, and when Danny leans harder to the right, they bump shoulders, and there’s weird comfort in that, and a little jolt, wild and happy and not entirely unfamiliar for some reason, Danny can’t tell why and doesn’t care to make sense of it, or anything much at all.

 

 

~***~

 

 

There are two private anniversaries in Danny’s life that punch him in the solar plexus no matter the time or the place, no matter how much he thinks he’s getting over it, it’s just always there.

His father’s birthday.

His father’s death.

They echo with emptiness and misery inside of him, and it’s been eight years, and he still misses him, and still bitterly desperately needs him, wants to talk to him, wants advice on a case, and wants a life where he can be a brat and pretend that he doesn’t. Wants to be a man proving that he can pull his own weight to his father instead of trying to outrun the shadow cast by his legend.

_The apple sometimes does fall far from the tree._

Who told him that? He supposes it doesn’t matter since apparently he’s heard similar sentiments enough in his life to have forgotten.

On these days Danny goes and gets stupid drunk. He’s not an angry type of drunk, never has been, but for these occasions he tries to be. Tries finding that random asshole in the bar that deserves a beating, and then he’s all fists, and he _wants_ it. The fight. The pain that’s clean and simple.

He always wears shades the next day because his eyes are bloodshot, and sunlight hurts, and because he’s got a mother of all shiners blooming there.

Last year Sam dragged him out of a bar before the tradition has been carried out. Neither of them appreciated it: it was only two weeks into their acquaintance, and Sam didn’t need the trouble of babysitting the new guy, and Danny didn’t need anyone’s help, wanted to have his face smashed in.

Danny sighs and finishes his drink, tries to catch the bartender’s attention and signal for a refill.

“This seat taken?”

Someone is already sliding onto the stool next to him, and Danny turns, ready to bite their head off, snap that _Yes, it is,_ maybe start up something ugly already, but he swallows it all back because quite suddenly it’s Jack. Stupid solid Marine, why did he come here?

“What do you want?” Danny asks gruffly.

“It’s a bar,” Jack says simply. “Let’s start with a beer.”

He’s wearing his civilian clothes, and Danny decides that maybe he doesn’t know anything after all, and anyway, it’s so hilariously new to see him like that, not in his uniform, not in his lawyery get-up, not even in his sports clothes which are a kind of uniform still, but in short sleeves, and jeans, and relaxed, kicking back after a long day, and no, he definitely doesn’t know.

Danny has no idea what to say to him but figures it won’t be a problem: Jack has never sought him out for brilliant conversations. But everything’s not like it should be tonight. Danny’s morose, and his normally loose tongue is stiff in his mouth, and Jack is wearing civilian clothes, and Danny has never known him to seek to fill silences, but all of a sudden Jack is talking at him, and Danny can’t be bothered to pay any attention. He stares at his mouth moving, but his ears are deaf, and the whiskey tastes of Elvis’s voice, and his father telling him in soft voice about his mother, and remembers his graduation, when he passed the bar and had no one to tell.

“Danny?”

“Hm?” He looks up, blinks past his mind-numbing stupor and tries to look engaged, but Jack looks at him with unsettling understanding.

“My father died today,” Danny says, blurts out, lets it spill all over them, and Jack nods, doesn’t miss a beat, never does when you drop bombs on him, he’s dependable like that.

“I know,” he says.

“You know? How—how do you _know?_ ” Danny demands, a little outraged.

“Seemed like a thing I should know about you. I’m sagacious like that.”

“Sagacious. Shit.” Danny snorts at his vocabulary and can’t think of anything else, and it’s odd, this level of consideration, but Jack probably likes to plan for meltdowns, so maybe it isn’t odd at all, just Jack being overly controlling in all areas of life.

What’s really weird is that he screamed bloody murder at Sam for messing with him on this day, but nothing in Jack elicits the same aggravation in him, and Danny suddenly thinks how he must look like shit, how he’s trying to get drunk and failing even at that, and the lighting in this place probably brings out everything already shitty in Danny’s appearance, and Jack still looks at him with a startling level of tolerance and asks:

“You want me to drive you home?” Jack asks.

Danny doesn’t, he’s still thrumming with the past that wants to get out of him, but that would be the smart thing to do and maybe this year he will grow up a little bit.

“Yeah, man,” he says tiredly. He hums Elvis on the way back.

 

 

~***~

 

 

The case feels like it’s slowly sinking to the bottom of a bog. Their client refuses their counsel, and they’re getting exactly nowhere. They have drinks outside, on a back porch. Jack’s being quiet—which, for him is saying something. He hasn’t objected to having company, but Danny is beginning to feel like he’s intruding nonetheless.

His own bottle is empty: he’s a quick drinker, especially when the mood strikes, and tonight it does. It will wrap up in an ugly way, he can tell. Sometimes the happy ending are soured, (and he’s thinking of Dawson and Downey again,) but sometimes there are just no happy endings.

Jack leans back and takes a generous mouthful of beer. He’s been scowling one moment, but when he sets the bottle down, his face is composed again, sealed off like a motherfucking tomb.

It’s amazing to Danny how he can shift gears like that at will. He likes the scant smiles and to know that behind the stonewall that’s his face Jack’s actually approachable, and it feeds into his ego, sure, that Jack loosens up around him, shows the person he keeps locked away—always too damn proper, it’s downright victorian. This porcupine routine, though, is much less fun.

And then there’s today when a fucking idiot of a suspect succeeds in riling Jack up, and some of the things he’s said, Danny’s fists are still itching to punch him in the teeth—only Jack has beaten him to it. There’s today when Danny drags Jack away, not because he’s not in a hundred percent agreement with Jack—because he is, and way to go—and the man throws at him, _Who the fuck are you?_ and in a fit of deep fucking irony Jack says, _I’m a lawyer._ Which is both a very un-Jack-like situation and Danny’s not looking forward to shoveling this shit around tomorrow, and yet it leaves Danny giddy too for no discernable reason. Proud, too.

“You’re piece of work,” Danny says, in a light, teasing sort of tone. Can’t think of anything else that would put it any more succinctly.

Jack narrows his eyes at him. “Why don’t you fuck right off, Danny,” he snaps, and yeah, the case is definitely getting to him. And he sounds completely exhausted, too.

“Hey. No need for that. I still like you,” Danny says, raising both hands placatingly. The sharp edges could use a little trimming, sure, but still, he indisputably does.

Jack looks up and looks at him for a while. His eyes are heavy tonight, and Danny finds himself suddenly embarrassed, like he’s said the wrong thing again, and there’s some quick reaction in Jack’s face, almost unnoticeable but Danny catches it, but doesn’t know what it means.

Jack looks away and it’s gone, but the evening air between them seems to shift. Danny often catches that too. Doesn’t know what it means either.

 

 

~***~

 

 

“You know, I always meant to ask—you ever saw any action?” Danny wonders at one point.

“No,” Jack shakes his head, uninterested in the topic, and Danny didn’t think he would be _glad_ to hear it, but he is, a little bit.

His own sense of duty belongs to his father more than the country. His sense of self lies in being a lawyer, not a Lieutenant. Service colors his world, but doesn’t define it, and he could never be a naval officer, he doesn’t think. Could never be something other than a lawyer for officers, too, though, so it’s all a little complicated there, in his head. The Marines, though, they are a terrifying bunch that have no concept of staff, or non-combat, not like the Navy. A Marine lawyer is still an officer, and any officer still goes through boot camp, and is always prepped for combat.

“But you served?” he asks.

“Soft power only,” Jack waves his hand. “Stress relief and evac ops, and a diplomatic tour in eighty-nine with the _Niagara Falls_.”

“Oh yeah!” Danny responds readily. “I can see that. That winning smile of yours is sure diplomatic as hell.”

“You know, I’ve heard Commander Galloway recommend you for a case recently. Said, I believe, that you were a ‘lethal weapon’ for the negotiations, and the Colonel laughed and asked her, _“Lethal for them or us?”_ So maybe tone down the superiority there. You’re not exactly Mr. Diplomacy yourself.”

Danny snorts and frowns, curious. “Which case was that?”

“I don’t know, although judging by your ignorance on the matter, I believe they gave you a _hard pass._ ”

 

 

~***~

 

 

The bar is pounding and roaring around and inside him tonight. He smiles at a girl that comes up to them—a reflexive gesture, him being nearly compulsive about flirting with the pretty ones. She tries to look confident but she doesn’t fit here. Neither does Jack, for that matter, not with his rigid staunchness. That’s probably why being in these joints never rubs off on him. Danny, on the other hand, feels the unpleasant buzz in his bloodstream that he can’t quite purge from his system.

“You want to buy me a drink?” the girl asks, boldly, and he squints at her and flashes her a patented _I’m a Navy lawier_ smile, but with a hint of patronizing to it.

“I’m flattered, miss, but I’m here with my pal.” He nods at Jack, and turns to look at him, and Jack is sitting suddenly all too stiff, his hand circled tightly around his glass.

“I was asking _him,_ actually,” she says loudly, trying to speak over the music and the noise, and Danny blinks, surprised, and oh. Well, then. The mistake is almost embarrassing for his ego, but honestly, Jack’s look of hilarious surprise is worth it.

Danny snorts, which earns him a nasty sharp look, before Jack purges both it and the surprise from his face and radiates an easy smooth confidence instead. Danny lowers his eyes and doesn’t know why he snorted, it’s stupid, he’s stupid, and Jack is, well, he’s Smiling Jack Ross. Had to be a major heartbreaker in college. Maybe he still is, what does Danny know? Danny’s got no fucking idea.

“Your uniform’s quite… eye-catching,” the girl tells him, and Danny scoffs inwardly, feeling slighted, because _hello, dress whites? anyone?_

Jack smiles. “The view isn’t bad from where I’m sitting either,” he says, and Danny thinks his ears are burning a little bit and he should probably relocate somewhere, possibly back to the hotel, no use in staying here and drinking alone.

“I’m on duty here, ma’am,” Jack says in the next breath, apology in his voice. “No can do on your offer. But I’d be happy to oblige you after it’s all over.”

She looks pleased when she leaves, and Danny frowns and says, “How are you supposed to find each other _‘after it’s all over’_?” with exaggerated air quotations.

Jack looks at him with an arched eyebrow. “Luck have it, we won’t,” he shrugs. Danny keeps frowning, puzzled, and Jack rolls his eyes. “This way she isn’t embarrassed that I turned her down.”

Danny blinks. And blinks again. And feels like laughing again for some unfathomable reason. “Not your type, Jack?”

Jack shrugs and takes out two cigars from the inside of his pocket, offers one of them to Danny. “Like you said. I’m here with a pal. Why, you disappointed you aren’t hers?”

“You’re kidding me, I’m outraged!” Danny laughs. Feels light and bright. “You know what they say about dress whites and gold wings? The girl is always supposed to go for me first.”

Jack lights the cigar, his mouth curving around it with unusual smugness, and gives him a dismissive shrug. “Evidently, your Navy prowess is highly overrated.”

 

 

~***~

 

 

Danny doesn’t quite recall how they end up back at the hotel—it’s not that he’s drunk, ‘cause he’s not, he just lets his tongue run loose, and the conversation starts as they’re leaving the bar, and then all of a sudden Danny is tumbling out of the elevator after Jack ungracefully, back at the hotel already.

“Really? You gonna walk me to my door now, is that it?” Jack chuckles.

Danny freezes and realizes that oh, wait a second, their rooms are on different floors, whaddaya know. He looks down at himself stupidly, at his dress whites, and on Jack’s uniform, and all he can think of saying is, “Well. Since I’m the _wife_.”

Jack laughs. Not snorts, not chuckles, full-on laughs, shoulders shaking, and it’s rare, and makes something careen inside of Danny, makes him smile helplessly and watch Jack’s face, and it’s unbelievably indescribably stupid how much he knows about Jack’s smiling-scowling-laughing habits. Jack’s laugh dies down, although the smile is still lingering over his mouth faintly, and he catches Danny’s eyes and looks at him like he’s waiting for something, and Danny realizes he’s been _staring_ and looks away abruptly.

“Um. Uh. Did they—Did they ever give us the copies of the files we requested?” he asks quickly.

“Oh. Oh yeah,” Jack scoffs, flips the key in his hand and opens the door to his room, motioning for Danny to follow. He doesn’t, looks around carefully and keeps rocking on his feet in the doorway. “You have _got_ to see this,” Jack says with contempt, picking out the folder from his neatly stacked notes and tossing it to Danny. He barely manages to catch it.

Everything inside is redacted, and Danny snorts humorlessly. “Of course,” he says. “Fucking Marines. Fucking _assholes._ ”

Jack snorts. “Oh. Thank you. That song again,” he says, and his tone is light, but Danny detects the ever-present hidden edginess behind it.

“Hey, that’s not what I meant,” he backtracks quickly, looking up. “You know I don’t mean half the shit I say. I don’t think _that_.” The conviction of his voice is somewhat undermined by the slur creeping into it.

Jack gives him an impenetrable look, presses his lips together flatly. “You are so ridiculous.”

But Danny panics suddenly, for no apparent reason other than he is a moron and an asshole, and he needs to make this right, whatever _this_ is. “Jack,” he insists. “I don’t think you’re like them. Obviously. Jesus.”

Jack waves him away, probably because Danny’s a little drunk, and as far as apologies go this has been pretty mediocre, and Jack’s a little drunk himself, and maybe that’s why he’s suddenly pissed off, he doesn’t normally get so pissed off, and Danny really wants the unhappy squint in his eyes to disappear.

And the things is, it’s like a crude jigsaw puzzle that comes together in his head, and it only does because he’s probably drunk after all, and his brain makes improbable leaps of logic, and the snapshots he’s put together wouldn’t have fit if he were trying to piece it together sober, but in this moment it all makes sense:

the way he knows Jack’s smiles, and Jack knows the date his father died, and bumping Jack’s shoulder when they’re walking side by side, and how Danny’s not good with silences, but how Jack’s can be infectious, and dammit that girl tonight, what was that, what even _was that_ , a knot of messy and twisted something Danny doesn’t examine closely, only he doesn’t even have to. Because what he did is he forgot they were heading to different floors. Because he followed Jack here, and there’s this jolt inside of him that Danny finds so maddeningly familiar but never knows why, and it comes to him now, that it’s all for the same fucking reason, _all of it. The same._

(He’s nineteen, and there’s a dance at the university, he spins the girl, thick red curls flying up, and dips her low, and the pit of his stomach keeps spinning, and keeps spinning, her lips taste of strawberry and vanilla, of her dessert, and Mary’s his study partner, they are in their third year, fingers meeting over the whispering pages of thick Harvard lawbooks, mouth pressing together, and his stomach jolts, and the breeze is fresh form the seaside, he and Jack walking away from that joint on the first case they ever worked together, and it jolts, it fucking jolts, and Jack knows the date his father died, and Danny knows the pattern of his smiles.)

It cannot be the same, and Danny hasn’t even noticed anything because he’s a blind oblivious asshole, and he fucked up, and he’s fucked up, it’s insane, and worth a laugh, too, rightfully hilarious, really, and it can’t be the same except for the part that it is.

“I don’t think you’re like them,” he repeats in a dull voice. “I don’t think you’re like anyone!” he proclaims in a fit of fierce ineloquence, but somehow ends up meaning it in more ways than just salvaging his latest insult.

Jack laughs shortly. “Oh jeez, I didn’t realize you drank like a girl, Kaffee, I will never take you out for anything stronger than beer again ever.”

And Danny thinks he can be so fantastically stupid, _(how could anyone be so fantastically stupid,)_ and Jack is right—slow, sometimes, he’s so slow, and he rolls on the balls of his feet and kisses him.

Plants himself, awkwardly, shallowly, over Jack’s stiff rigid ‘O’ of surprise, and this is terrible, and so stupid, and he freezes because _why would you do something so sensationally stupid Danny,_ and then he is deathly afraid. He slides off of Jack’s face and then lunges at him again the very next instant, fingers digging in too this time, before he can so much as glimpse Jack’s expression, he’s too terrified, lunges like there is no tomorrow, shoves his tongue into Jack’s mouth like he hopes this will prevent the irreparable damage he is causing—an irreconcilable plan if he ever had one.

He’s not a consequences kind of man, not him, no, Dan Kaffee is an idiot is what he is, an idiot at everything he does, and what is even happening in this moment? He doesn’t know, lost that train of thought the moment he followed it, went all-in and Jack isn’t doing anything, Jack is always looking at him with exasperation, like Danny’s always, unfailingly a little ridiculous in his eyes, and how stupid he must appear now, stupid and ugly and he’s too much of a coward to take a step back, afraid of what will happen when he does.

Jack makes a rough angry noise, and his fingers dig into Danny’s shoulders like claws, and he shoves him away, and Danny gasps, he’s gonna be so dead, he is looking desperately for something to say, but he is left defenseless, really committed fucking emotional suicide right there, and he opens his mouth and he really needs to say _I’m sorry,_ and he needs to say _God, let’s forget this ever happened,_ and he needs to say _Please, don’t ruin me_ —but he’s **_not_** sorry, and he **_doesn’t_** care if Jack ruins him, he cares that Jack doesn’t hate him for this, and he wants, still, so desperate and fucking naïve, for nothing of what’s happening right now to be happening—not sorry—wants Jack not to be sorry either, he’s fucked-up, he’s selfish, he is sick, _who does that oh Danny what did you do?_

“Shit,” he says helplessly, panting and afraid, and then, because he’s a coward, he says, “I’m plastered.”

“Get out,” Jack says, quietly, but with cold rage quivering inside his voice, shoves him outside and slams the door. Danny inhales a lungful of cold air and thinks hysterically that fucking Eliot was fucking wrong: his world definitely ends with a bang.

 

 

~***~

 

 

He spends the weekend on Jo’s couch: doesn’t even have the balls to stay at his apartment, his balls have shrunk back into his body, he’s got no balls for anything at all. He’s afraid Jack will come and, what, probably, castrate him with a blunt rusty knife, right? Danny toys with the idea for a while, wondering whether he’ll die from blood loss or infection in that scenario—because that is a _really_ constructive line of thinking.

“You wanna talk about it?” Jo asks.

“Meh,” he says. Keeps saying it to all her questions, eventually tuning them out until she finally forcibly drags him out to a diner across the street.

“Nice place,” he tells her casually, and she gives him a flat look that he knows too well, one he has known her to reserve for him from the very beginning that says: _cut – the – goddamn – bullshit._ “Well, what?” he complains.

“Talk,” she demands.

“Can’t I go back to lying on your couch?” he whines. “It’s a good couch. Kind to my back and my manly pain.”

“Your couch privileges have been revoked until you start making sense.”

“You’re kind of mean. Why are all my friends mean?” Danny asks of his pie. The pie stays silent and crumbles when Danny stabs it with a fork.

“Because you’re a giant baby who deserves it?” Jo supplies instead.

Danny rubs his eyes, scratches them with vehemence and then asks, “Why didn’t you want to date me?”

For a second Jo looks furious with him, with his stupid insolence, but as she’s pulverizing him with her eyes she realizes he means it, actually wants to know, and she sighs, clearly asking God for a bucket of patience.

“Actually, you don’t have to answer,” he stops her urgently. Imagines very vividly that she might open her mouth and then walk all over him with her sharp little heels, and he’s been having kind of a rough few days, too rough for his ego to handle it. “What I mean is, like, do you think there’s something wrong with me?” he asks helplessly instead.

Jo is watching him in honest alarm now. “Danny. What the hell happened?” she asks softly, worriedly.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Something? Ah, I don’t—”

What happened. What happened is that there’s a girl sitting over at the next table, she’s got strawberry blonde hair and legs to kill, and when she passed him by on her way to the bathroom, he could smell her perfume, and it was exquisite, she was exquisite, and that’s the kind of guy he is, Jo would have probably murdered him if she knew how much he is that guy, but he notices this shit. He likes, _loves_ the way women feel. The curled hair, the buttons of their shirts being tight around their chests, that’s what he enjoys, and the other thing? The thing that he did because he’s stupid? It’s not the Navy way. It’s not his way either, he has never looked at Jack and thought, _Oh, well, he’s attractive,_ well maybe once, and strictly in a measuring, competitive sense.

What happened is that something’s bruised in his head now and he hasn’t started thinking it, God no, but he remembers: hot breath, and holding Jack’s lapels, and the struggle of bodies against each other, and it was good, it was impossible, he should fix it, somehow, or get fixed, like a horny dog, should be afraid of all these thoughts. He isn’t.

He should probably be very afraid of completely different things, too, like his commission being on the line here. Only there’s this huge blind spot that he has about friendships, even when he fucks them up, because he does not believe Jack would throw him under the bus.

 _That’s just your lack of imagination,_ Jack would have likely said, and it would have been _nice_ to ask for _his_ fucking advice, but too bad, he can’t, and of all the things that rightfully should scare him what Danny fears the most is the very real prospect that he won’t ever get to ask anything of Jack, ever again.

 

 

~***~

 

 

Danny is stewing in his own panic for two weeks, alternating between being absolutely terrified of ever hearing Jack’s name again and then being even more terrified of never getting their friendship back and missing him like an idiot. Sometimes it almost makes him want to try and catch him after his basketball practice, or knock on the door of his office, and open his big stupid mouth and actually say the words, _I’m sorry._ Goes a long way to mending things, or so they say. Grovelling’s good, too. Danny is reasonably sure that after a certain point Jack would have even forgiven him, except then what?

_Then what?_

What happens then is new orders come down from the General’s office—not an investigation job, a court case. And Danny’s not stupid, he knew this would happen sooner or later, has been expecting for it to happen immediately, really, what with karma being kind of a bitch. For his opposing counsel to be Jack Ross. Danny’s face is a stone-mask but inside he’s hysterical, and wonders if Jack’s laughing mirthlessly at this too. If he will try to wriggle out of it, if he hasn’t already, but no, not Jack Ross, he wouldn’t. He will never put himself above his duties.

No one comes to Danny about any plea bargains, and so he’s sure Jack’s still on the case—the wall of his silence is deafening. The night before the arraignment Danny cannot sleep, thinks of what it will be like to face Jack the next morning.

It’s burning, soaking in his gut like a knot of something liquid and explosive when he walks into the courtroom. Jack is already at his table, and Danny makes it to his seat and stares at him, stares _right at him._ Jack is looking dead ahead, clears his throat and waits for the judge to enter. Doesn’t look at Danny at all.

“The prosecution asks to move for a general court-martial,” he says, when the judge addresses him, and Danny lets out a breath for the stupidest, insanest of reasons: he has missed Jack’s voice. “The victim has been shot at close range with a burst of concentrated gunfire, and we will show it to be premeditative murder.”

“Lieutenant Kaffee?”

He rises to his feet, and feels a little feverish, and a _lot_ of guilty, he looks at Jack, tries to catch his eyes still, and he has been a terrible fucking friend, just, hasn’t he? Who does things like that? Only selfish and scared little men.

“How will the defense plead, Lieutenant?”

But because he is a selfish, scared little man, all Danny can say is:

“Not guilty, Your Honor. The defense will show that the death was a friendly fire accident.”

Out of the corner of his eye he spots Jack finally, _finally_ snapping his head to look at him, and Danny has a feeling his expression is murderous, but he doesn’t turn, doesn’t look, he leaves the courtroom as hastily as he can, feels the burn of Jack’s eyes on himself all the way.

Jack catches him by the elevator, hard fingers digging into his elbow and dragging him away.

“What are you doing?” he asks furiously through gritted teeth. “You should have pled out.”

“I’m sorry, no one offered me any deals,” Danny says, wants to make it a joke but comes off sounding a little pretentious instead, with the rigid straight back and cool voice, and he looks away hastily, fears that his poker face will not be enough to fool Jack Ross. It never has been.

 _Strong witnesses. Handsome too,_ comes to his mind, ill-timed, unbidden, laden with so many other implications now, he shudders. Yes, Jack has always seen through his bullshit.

“And what, you can’t think on your own?” Jack snaps at him.

 _Can’t think at all?_ is what Danny hears, and dreads a little the composed rage in Jack, still in control, always in control, all his anger reined in, but it’s there, so much of it.

“Was I supposed to turn over? Play dead?” he asks, stubborn and upset, and then in a fit of sudden fierceness, angry at himself and this entire situation, he looks at Jack and says. “What’s the matter? You scared I might beat you again?” It’s a petty, childish, _senseless_ dig, because of course Jack _wouldn’t_ be. “Because I _will_ , Jack. I am not wrong about this.”

Jack scoffs with derision. “The amount of things you have been wrong about in your life is truly _staggering,_ Lieutenant. Excuse me while I have a good laugh about this,” he says.

There’s thick and breathless hotness spreading low in Danny’s gut. “Care to make a bet of it, huh, Jack?”

Jack’s eyes narrow. “It’s _Major._ ”

Danny can feel his nostrils flaring. He’s been afraid, before, but now he’s just angry, so stupidly angry at him. “Well, do you? Major?” he pushes insistently.

Jack stares at him like he’s insane. “Oh, I’ll bet you. You have no case.”

Jack stares at him like something else, too, and Danny realizes viscerally the impulse to lean forward and be stupid again, only stupid sober this time, the stupidest, and it’s Jack’s fucking voice, it’s his arrogant eyes and indignant stare, his infuriating _everything—_ it cuts through Danny and wrenches it out of him, and Danny recoils at how honest it feels.

Something in Jack’s face twists and slackens, and Danny remembers that he’s staring at his mouth again, forces himself to look up, meet his eyes, and the arrogance is gone from them, he looks guarded and _rattled,_ and Danny blinks because no, that’s too open for Jack, Danny shouldn’t be able to spot it. Jack’s face shifts again, and then it’s gone, then he doesn’t see it anymore—but he did. Knows that he did and doesn’t know what the hell it meant.

There is something familiar, Danny thinks, about this look of quiet dismay, one that Jack hides promptly, all the fight gone out of him suddenly. Danny feels he should know it, but as he has recently found, he is not fast with putting together visual cues.

“I will see you in court,” Jack says turning away. His voice is morose and grey. Danny watches him leave, and feels like he’s dangling in the air. He knows why he nearly ran out of the courtroom, knows that he’s running from his shame. But what Jack is running away from now he has no fucking idea.

 

 

~***~

 

 

In the courtroom Jack comes after him with everything he’s got. _Objection_ rings around the room nearly to every one of Danny’s remarks, and there’s the obligatory, scathing _Is the defense going anywhere with this?_ to which he says, _Yes, Your Honor, the defense is making a point and would like to remind the prosecution that we did allow them to make theirs without interruptions,_ and there’s a juggling of _Sustained’_ s and _Overruled’_ s and they are actually _talking_ over each other by the end of it, when they really get into it, and Danny has never behaved like that in court.

“Alright. This is enough,” the judge rules eventually. “This hearing is going to a recess until oh-eight hundred hours tomorrow, and I expect both counselors to talk _one at a time_ , not over each other, and _not_ turn my courtroom into a kinder garden.”

“Wow,” Jo says softly, the three of them still seated, a little dumbstruck by Danny’s misconduct, and everyone else around them starts to get up and scatter. Danny stares in front of himself, looks neither at his friends, nor at Jack, doesn’t dare to.

“I don’t recall ever being smacked with this much testosterone. And I’ve been to your softball games, Danny.”

“It’s fine,” he says mechanically and starts shoving the documents into his brief case.

“Did Butch and Sundance argue?” Sam asks dryly.

“Oh, thank you for the comparison,” he returns. “I do hope you don’t mean we will crash and burn at the end.” He tries to force cheerfulness out of himself, but doesn’t think he succeeds by much.

“You might if you don’t put your foot down on the breaks.”

“It’s fine, Sam,” Danny repeats. “What goes on in a courtroom isn’t personal. We’re both professionals. Well,” he makes a frisky face at them. “I’m _me_. Jack’s definitely a professional, though.”

“Really? Someone ought to remind him that,” Jo says, unamused. “Because he definitely brought whatever it is you’re fighting about to work today.”

Danny presses his mouth together and is empty for words in response to that, gives them both a noncommittal wave instead, but Jo catches him by the elbow, never one to _not_ grind the words into her opponent. “Someone ought to remind you of that too. Because you’re not fighting for a win for our client right now. You’re just fighting Ross.”

 

 

~***~

 

 

Danny knocks on the open door of Jack’s office with much reluctance, the space feeling as unwelcoming as its owner, which is a ridiculous notion, of course, it’s just a room, but when you dispense with the metaphors, what else can he feel? He’s let down a friend, has every reason to feel objectionable and ashamed.

Jack looks up from his paperwork and stares at him, momentarily startled, because here is the last place Jack would have expected to find him. He opens his mouth and looks torn, like he doesn’t know if he should say _Danny,_ or _Lieutenant,_ or _Enter,_ or _What the hell are you doing here?_ In the end he says nothing, just raises his hand in an exasperated gesture which Danny takes as an invitation to come in.

“I wanted you to look at something,” he says without preambles, his tone calm and smooth, proper, and hands Jack a folder.

He silently accepts it, tugs it out of Danny’s grip by the very edge, leaving a wide berth between their fingers. He reads what’s inside in silence, his non-expression betraying nothing, then closes it, places on the table in front of himself and smoothes his hands over it before looking at Danny sharply.

“So, what?” he asks dryly. “You’ve come to collect on your bet?”

Danny blinks and frowns. “I, uh, don’t think we placed any actual bets?” he replies carefully. “And anyway, no, that’s not why.” He looks at the folder underneath Jack’s hands, feels the muscles of his face twitch for a split second because he realizes he finds Jack’s fingers distracting. “He’s innocent. My client,” he says redundantly.

“It appears you were right after all,” Jack says through clenched teeth, like it pains him to acknowledge it.

Danny cringes and mutters, not at all sure anymore that this was such a smart play. “I can’t introduce it.”

“Why not?” Jack frowns and studies him suspiciously for a long moment. “Where did you get it, Danny?”

“Oh no, it’s all legal,” he waves the concern off and sighs. “I mean—he’s up for a medal. If I go on the record with it, they’ll take it all away, the benefits, and oh, it’s not even about the pension or anything, it’s about his memory. His last act should not be of a coward who feared the indignity of illness so much he stepped into the line of friendly fire to have it quick and dirty instead, to have it the way he was groomed to expect.”

Jack watches him bemusedly. “That was his last act,” he says reasonably, incomprehensive. “He was that coward.” And Danny has a nasty suspicion that Jack is somehow referring to him, too, although that’s a nonsensical notion.

“His parents deserve better than to see their son’s name dragged through the mud after they just buried him.”

Jack sighs impatiently. “Why are you telling me this? What do you expect me to do?”

“You could drop the charges,” Danny speaks softly, and Jack’s face elongates in surprise.

“You’re joking. Right?” There’s a barely contained edge to his voice that Danny ignores.

“I’m not asking for me. It’s the right thing to do.”

Jack sets his jaw forward and narrows his eyes. “You’ve got some nerve on you,” he says in a low voice, almost menacing, and _no_ , no he _doesn’t_ , Jack is supposed to be without passion and prejudice, supposed to see that Danny’s campaigning for the case and it has _nothing_ to do with the fact that they are constantly at each other’s throats.

“Oh come on!” he bristles. “If we weren’t in a middle of a fight, I would have not hesitated to ask this of you!”

“A fight? Is that what we’re doing, you think, we’re fighting?” Jack rises from his table and goes around it, and Danny leans away, braces himself he doesn’t know what for, maybe that Jack will finally deck him. Jack slams the door shut, cutting them off from prying ears and eyes, and looks at him with a morbid downturn of his expressive mouth, and there is no way he’s missed that flinch. Danny wonders what he’s thinking.

“I wanna throttle you,” Jack says flatly, sounding dead serious. “I think if I didn’t know how that court-martial was gonna go for me, I probably would have.”

Danny feels his face prickle with a flush of hot embarrassment. “Oh, if this is going to be another one of your speeches about court-martiallable offences, you better write me up right after.” Jack blanches at the bitterness in his voice. “In fact, why haven’t you?”

“Because you were _drunk_ , Danny. That’s all you were,” he exclaims with contempt.

Danny goes still and stares at him in a bit of a stupor, and that brings so many answers to so many questions gnawing at him, not the least of which is: what Jack has been thinking about all of this. Turns out, he thinks Danny was being a drunken fratboy, and something lets go in Danny at this realization. But what it doesn’t bring is relief, and he squirms in his seat, because it _should,_ by all rights, he _should_ be glad that it’s not an uglier sort of accusation that Jack throws at him.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to process the words in their context entirely, to recognize what seems so strange about them—like, maybe three, four full seconds.

“You are angry that I was drunk,” he repeats, can’t quite quell the surprise in his voice. “Not that I did it.”

Jack meets his eyes and looks furious. And looks _devastated_ in equal measure. Like Danny has unearthed a secret, and maybe he has, unwittingly so, and he’s got half a mind to apologize, only the dismay in Jack’s eyes makes him _choke_. Oh, he might be _slow_ with the visual cues, yes—slow to place the vague sensations of familiarity he gets, but when he locks on, he recalls them with perfect clarity.

He thinks now of the loss and disappointment written on Jack’s face when their first trial was wrapping up, and the disgust when they were sitting in the audience a few weeks later, and that Jack has never looked at him like that, only with anger—a realization that Danny finds reassuring. Anger is better, is _hot,_ is _messy._

More importantly, Danny remembers another instance, puts together a sequence of them in his mind: Jack’s sneer when Danny flirts with girls, drunk redneck harassing them in a bar, Jack’s stiff shoulders, a brief look of ire, an even deeper scowl when women hit on Danny without him inviting it; and the look of surprise—one that Danny couldn’t understand then but finally does—when he realizes that Danny’s the object of their mocking. Danny, not himself. And it leaves him momentarily addled. It flashes through Danny’s mind like a red-hot spear, and he blinks. And blinks, and blinks again, and wonders if it really means what he thinks it does, or if he’s making insane connections all over again. (He doesn’t think he is.)

“I… have to go,” he says in an affected tone, standing up abruptly, and Jack no longer looks angry, he looks worried, looks a little desperate, and Danny doesn’t know what to do about this, what to think, doesn’t trust himself not to do something stupid again. “Good talk,” he adds carefully, stiffly, and backs out the door, only he’s forgotten the folder, of course he did, and he struts back comically, not quite looking at Jack, and tugs it from underneath his fingers, muttering something that’s not quite a mumble and not quite a _Sorry,_ and then he’s finally, blessedly, free to flee.

 

 

~***~

 

 

_“He’s dead, Danny. You have to protect the only life that matters, that of your client,” Jo tells him as they mull over the doctor’s report inside the folder._

_“Better yet, you could just apologize to Ross and then ask him for a favor,” Sam says peevishly._

_“I did,” Danny mutters quietly. “I think I just made it worse.”_

_Jo has the grace to look sympathetic…_

“Kaffee?” Jack’s voice sounds from the doorway, and Danny freezes, just like Jack froze the day before when it was Danny knocking on the door of his office. Only Jack managed to be indignant even while startled. Danny just looks fantastically ridiculous: his office is a scary mess, _he’s_ a mess, and he’s bitten on an apple while digging through his files with both hands and it’s still stuck in his mouth. Seeing Jack, Danny clenches his teeth together and lets the fruit fall into his lap, dripping saliva, while he quickly chews and gulps.

Jack looks unsurprised by it all. His face remains expressionless. “Congratulations,” he says solemnly, and Danny starts getting up, and the damned apple falls on the floor, and he can’t imagine feeling more mortified, and he feverishly tries to come up with an appropriate response. And to figure out what this olive branch even means.

“I—N-n—uh—” he gulps again. “Thank you,” he says, and it sounds like he’s just accepting the praise, and quickly he adds, “Uh, no, I mean. Thank **_you_**. It’s your doing, after all.”

_In court this morning, Jack stands up and announces that the defense drops all charges. Sam makes a whooping sound of triumph, but Danny’s not particularly responsive, he stares in front of himself, immobile and shocked, and sways when Jo punches him in the shoulder before turning his head and looking at Jack. Jack’s looking back this time. He isn’t smiling, nor is he angry, he’s wearing a careful polite expression of something that Danny is hard-pressed to name and comes up with ‘equal grounds’ in the end. Maybe, ‘compromise’._

_He’s not quite sure what to make of it in light of yesterday’s revelations. He was sure Jack would be doubly furious. Not generous. Not… this._

Jack shrugs and lingers in the doorway, and Danny gets up. “Uh—You want to come in?” he asks hurriedly, wiping his apple-sticky hands on his pants, wondering what he’s supposed to be saying next.

Jack shakes his head. Somewhere behind his proud and stiff non-expression he seems startled by the prospect. “No,” he says quietly, and “I’ll see you around.” He walks away before Danny can say anything else.

“Yeah!” he stills agrees with vigor, and Jack tenses and seems to hesitate, like he wants to turn around and say something else. After a brief struggle with himself he doesn’t, and leaves, and Danny watches him go.

It doesn’t take him any special epiphanies to figure out why Jack’s expression is so recognizable: it’s the same one he’s been wearing for the past two weeks. An expression of _I should not be feeling what I’m feeling_. An expression of _what I’ve done—I shouldn’t have._ What Jack’s done is punish Danny for what happened, punish him with fury and vengeance, and what he’s ashamed about is that the person he was really angry at was himself—because he felt it, was affected, left raw and humiliated by it. And now his secret shame is known, and he walks the same paths Danny has been walking, doesn’t know how to look Danny in the eye anymore. Doesn’t understand that Danny’s in it too.

He will make him see.

 

 

~***~

 

 

“Winner buys the drinks, right?”

It’s a day later and Danny’s standing on the porch of Jack’s house, holding up a bottle of bourbon—a damn expensive one—hoping it will bribe him a way inside. He’s been here once before, what seems like a lifetime ago now—they’ve been discussing a case, it was all strictly business. Danny hasn’t been invited this time.

From Jack’s implacable expression, Danny almost expects to be told to beat it, and when Jack slowly opens the door wider, his face is full of misgivings and hesitations.

“What brings you by?” he asks reluctantly, while Danny’s looking around. He hasn’t seen much of the place before and studies it now with hungry curiosity, like it will somehow help him understand Jack better. The only thing he glimpses is that Jack is freakishly tidy, but Danny has known that one already.

“Nothing much,” he says in a carefully lighthearted tone. “Looking for good company.”

Jack looks at him. His sleeves are rolled and Danny makes an effort not to stare at his forearms like he wants to lick them with his eyes. And not with his eyes, really. Jack walks past him into the kitchen, waves for him to follow, and Danny stares at his back instead, ramrod straight, proud, which has gotta be impressive, considering the massive burden he’s been carrying around all this time, alone. Danny watches Jack uncork the bottle he’s brought, and this time he does linger on his arms, his hands, narrows his eyes like he’s looking at the flames because something’s coming. He can feel the waiting sizzling in his gut now that he’s here, now that it’s about to come to a head, and every thought seems too dangerous, too easily overheard.

He watches Jack pour the bourbon and remembers all the other nights they kicked back, drank and talked, or drank and not talked, and they could do it again, he could start talking shop, cases he’s been handling, things that have been happening for the past couple of weeks, all normal stuff. Such a treacherous, wonderful _ease,_ he thinks—to slip back into the old shapes and borders, sweep it all under the rug, the mutual embarrassment and bridled anger, and they would be friends again. Just like that.

Danny, however, has never gone for easy.

“I remember you being more talkative,” he says, picking up the glass but not drinking, just stirring the liquid in it with a circular motion.

Jack’s kitchen doesn’t have a table, it has a counter and high-legged chairs. Danny’s perched on one. Jack is standing across the counter from him, leaning forward heavily. He hikes his eyebrows high and mutters, “Never been accused of that before.” He doesn’t touch his drink either.

Danny shrugs. “I could of course pretend that you’re no more silent than usual. But, I’m just saying. You’re gonna have to talk to me eventually.”

Jack’s expression is still hidden away from Danny. “I just got nothing to say,” he replies. Doesn’t mean it as a brush-off but as an excuse, an explanation.

Danny grimaces. “Oh, bull. Don’t be modest,” he says mockingly. “I’m sure you’ve got _plenty_ to say. And I would like to hear it.”

Jack bends his neck and shakes his head. “No, Danny. I am quite positive you wouldn’t.”

“Isn’t it up to me?” he says, but it’s a weak and overused rejoinder that doesn’t produce any effect. Jack still remains tight-lipped, and tense, and on the verge of throwing Danny out, it seems. “Well. Okay. If you’re not gonna—I myself have not suffered any declines of chattiness, and I never had any problems with talking, so maybe I can—I can say some things.”

Jack’s lips curl into a sardonic smirk. “Of course you can,” he says, like nothing less was expected, and Danny takes a modicum of courage in the fact that Jack is still able to ridicule him about something as simple as Danny being excessively verbose.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, go ahead,” Jack waves his hand invitingly, and apparently thinks Danny was apologizing for being mouthy. He wasn’t.

“No. I’m saying. I never actually did apologize, and I need to, so. I’m sorry.”

Jack looks away, his face contracting. “I _know_ you are, Danny,” he says.

Danny narrows his eyes. “See, I don’t think you do,” he says, crossing his arms tighter. “There’s this tension,” he waves between them, which earns him a sharp poisonous glare, and he quickly amends, “ _Now._ There’s this tension _now_. Between us. And it’s my fault. I did the stupidest thing, and put our friendship in jeopardy, and that was a shitty thing to do. And I can’t bear to have it ruined, I couldn’t take it if we weren’t friends, so, that’s, yeah, I’m _sorry_ for it, I _am_. But. I need you to hear me that—I _know myself._ ”

He attempts to sound serious and confident and flushes hotly when Jack laughs in his face. “Kaffee,” he says, not even apologetic. “I think your softball team knows you better than you know yourself. ‘Cause you don’t know you _at all_.”

Danny wants to argue, but Jack is not entirely wrong, and he has to concede the point. Tries to circle back to where he was heading with this. “Fine. But I know at least one thing that you don’t.”

“Only one? That’s reassuring.”

Danny scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Okay. Clearly, this metaphor isn’t working, but will you listen? I’m trying to—here—” he sighs, and this is not going well. He should have prepared a speech but his oratorical skills are only good for being a defense lawyer, apparently, not anything as tangled and delicate as what they’re attempting to talk about. If Jack would just stop dodging him.

“What I’m saying is, I know that you probably think that there are, like, normal people, who use both their hemispheres, or whatever, and then there’s your imbecile friend, Dan Kaffee, who only uses his brain cells to swing a softball bat and make filthy jokes.”

“That’s very accurate,” Jack appears theatrically impressed, and Danny nods solemnly, and says, “Thank you,” in a very serious tone, because this is a very serious matter, and the familiar crooked smirk is back at the corner of Jack’s mouth, and Danny wants to smile too, helpless, relieved that they can still do it, but he tries not to, for fear that he will lose his train of thought.

“The point is, I may not make plans, or contemplate my navel much, but when I do things, I always know that I’m doing them, it’s not a—I’m not a—like some people are very out of it when they’re drunk, but I’m not—I wasn’t even that drunk, actually, to be doing stuff that I won’t normally—” he pauses and makes a _‘pff’_ sound on exhaling, tries to pull his scrambled thoughts together and just say it right, he’s supposed to be good at making arguments for crying out loud, fuck, why hasn’t he prepared a speech?

“Danny—” Jack says warningly, and he must see where Danny is going with this and doesn’t want him to, like he didn’t want him to do the first stupid thing to begin with. Danny heeds it as well as he did the first time, which is to say not at all.

“I didn’t plan for it, okay? There was no game plan, no—And I definitely didn’t think it through. But—it still would have happened though.” He thinks it might be the right way of putting it, but it’s not, and Jack is hunching, elbows resting heavily on the table, eyes burrowing into the polished surface, and he refuses to look at Danny, not at all swayed. “Jack,” Danny says softly. “Help me out here, I have no idea—like—I think I know, I think I’ve figured this out, what I’m supposed to say, what you want to hear, but I don’t—know for sure. And.” He takes a pause and takes a breath, and comes up with what is possibly the lamest idea, and says helplessly. “The light, Jack? The light. It’s fucking _green_.”

Only it is apparently the _right_ thing to say, possibly the only thing, because it’s visceral to who they are, naval and marine officers, all social conduct governed by the euphemism of traffic lights, red-green-yellow, which is ridiculous, but draws out an immediate and instinctive reaction to a warning, a refusal, a permission, and it draws it out of Jack too, opens a door in his resolve that he forgot to keep locked, didn’t think to check because he didn’t think Danny would say it, would invite it so blatantly. He did; he does. Jack’s brows furrow deeply, like he is in a singular sort of pain, like he wants to evict the thought out of his mind, but it’s too late, the hook’s in. _Green light,_ Danny says, and the immediate response, the only response, is relief, is pursuit, and it blindsides Jack. Danny repeats it again, for good measure.

“It’s fucking green, Jack. It’s—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack cuts him off, and his voice is rasp, hoarse, and on the verge of tipping over. “So you’ve figured me out, I’ve been doing this for a hell of a lot longer than the couple of weeks you had to think about it, you can’t _possibly_ know what you’re saying!”

There’s a dangling feeling in his gut, of a verdict, awaited and unvoiced, and Danny doesn’t have the willpower to rehash what he does or doesn’t know like a mature person would. He _knows,_ alright, he fucking _knows_. Everything that Jack will say, Danny knows all of it: that no one can know, that Danny has to be careful, that he can’t anticipate how hard it’s gonna be—to lie about it, that their careers will be in constant danger. Jack thinks Danny hasn’t though of it but he did. And the answers would be: he doesn’t care; he will learn; he _can_ know and it’s gonna be worth it; he cares about it, too, he’s not an idiot. And he’s done thinking.

“Jesuh—pf—Now you’re all words?” he says instead. “You never want to talk, ever. So why don’t you _do_ something already. I dare you.”

It’s not fair to say this, and not smart to goad him like that, probably, but Danny just needs to know, he needs to know what Jack’s answer is gonna be, needs it this very second.

Jack eyes him balefully for a moment, like he thinks of delivering on his threat and killing Danny after all, or at least punching him really hard. He circles the counter, and when his hand grabs a hold of his collar, Danny stiffens and sways on his unstable chair, expecting a collision, and Jack narrows his eyes, because this sends the wrong fucking message, he shouldn’t have reacted, and Jack repeats, “You don’t know shit about what you want, Danny.”

“The only thing I don’t know is what you want,” Danny responds hoarsely, and damn him why did he have to sound so fucking raw? Jack’s face shifts, and Danny tries to cover it up by turning it into a joke, “But by all means, I love being suspended in uncertainty. Proceed to do nothing, this is all very exciting for m—”

Jack kisses his mouth shut, and for a second Danny grins into it, thinks that Jack must have wanted to shut him up like this for ages, followed by _hey, wait a minute, how long has this been going on for Jack anyway,_ he hasn’t even thought of it before, but then Jack pries his lips open with his tongue and crawls inside of his mouth, and Danny’s mind goes blank.

His fingers grip the edges of the chair tightly, purposefully. He wants to do a lot of things to Jack with his hands but he keeps himself steady, because Jack is trying to prove a point, that Danny doesn’t know what he wants, and Danny’s letting him fail at it. He opens his mouth greedily, and lets Jack in, lets Jack taste it, that he’s sure and unafraid, and Jack tilts his head, and Danny follows his every change of direction, languidly, unhurriedly, because he can exercise an enviable amount of patience when he wants to, chooses to. And he’s choosing to.

Jack’s fingers are ghosting over Danny’s jawline, tugging him closer, and Danny feels his hand shaking a little, and when Jack finally ducks his head, he lets out a gasp, way more ragged than Danny could have ever imagined coming from him, and he’s struggling for breath. He hunches forward, eyes squeezed shut, and their temples are grazing, almost pressed together.

“I’m not running away,” Danny says, and Jack looks up at him desperately, and Danny finally allows himself some initiative and moves his hand to the back of Jack’s neck. He brings their mouths together, and pushes himself out of the chair and into the kiss, and pushes Jack up against the counter, forceful, but still holding back, because everything he’s doing tonight has to be conscious, so very conscious to make Jack understand that he is not fucking around.

(Danny has been thinking of other things too: of whatever it is Jack’s been doing before, if he ever trusted anyone, or if every tryst was accompanied by a sense of panic, and of _who will have my career in their hands this time_ , and it’s a stomach-churning thought, this miserable flight from himself Jack’s been reduced too, it must have been hell. What Jack fails to consider is that Danny will never have to face any of these things: he’ll be in it with Jack. And they’ll be okay from here on out.)

He feels the softness of Jack’s tongue and the scratchy roughness of his stubble, and the diversity of it is shockingly, impossibly hot, and Danny presses deeper, hotter, closer. Jack’s chest’s rising and falling fast, and Danny puts his hands on his ribs to feel it, and then slides them underneath Jack’s shirt to feel him with his palms. Jack shudders and breaks off, gasping, and Danny doesn’t let him, dives in deeper into that wide-open breathless mouth, and Jack groans helplessly, and the sound of it shoots straight into Danny’s dick, it should terrify him how arousing he finds it all, but it doesn’t, it’s so good, too good, he presses himself against Jack’s leg, hard as a rock, and Jack’s fingers on his biceps curl and dig into his flesh in response, and Jack shifts, turns his hips and their groins brush, and this time it is Danny’s turn to groan, guttural and embarrassing and low, like a punch in the gut. He clenches all of his muscles, holds his breath, pushing back, and Jack, Jack looks ravaged, and Danny wants to do a million things to him, but most of all he wants to never stop kissing him, to run his fingers through Jack’s hair until it’s sticking out wildly, and kiss his mouth forever.

Jack doesn’t let him.

And the thing about it all, the hottest thing—and Jessup was so fucking wrong—not that Danny’s thinking about fucking _Jessup_ right fucking _now_ , god _forbid,_ he wouldn’t, but he’s thought of it before, in the days leading up to this, it _has_ occurred to him—the thing is _not_ that Jack’s a _Major_. Danny cannot recall ever looking at him and thinking, _oh, there goes my superior officer_. Jack has been one rank above him when they first met, a Captain _,_ and has been promoted since, and through it all he’s always been just Jack, and the number of bars and the color of leaves on his collar doesn’t change how flippant-ass and completely disrespectful towards him Danny has been, nor how much shit Jack’s been willing to put up with from him. That’s who they are.

What is, though, incredibly, stupidly hot, what steals the air from his lungs, fills him with anxiety and fear and thirst, is that Jack knows _exactly who Danny is._

When Jack looks at him, there’s a weight of understanding in his gaze, in the way his eyes are sharp and hard and precise, and grasp right at the shape and right at the heart of him. As if under Jack’s scrutiny he is wide open.

Jack looks at him and _knows_ that half the time Danny is godlessly afraid, and that the other half he simply does the “fools rush in” routine and never thinks anything through. He looks and knows how Danny was ready to bail on this entire life, knows it even before Danny’s half-ass attempts at confessions, Jack is just plain better at reading people is what he is. Jack, who acts without passion or fucking prejudice, always with his head in the game, always looking ahead, and so of course he _knows_ , as clear and plain as day, that Danny hasn’t thought of anything much at all when he kissed him that night at the hotel. Hasn’t though about court-martiallable offences, or any other offences he might inflict, but Jack has.

Jack has thought all of these things. Has thought, with a groan of exasperation, _oh, this boy’s ridiculous,_ and _sure, let’s humor him while he plays lawyer,_ and he has thought, yes, has thought, _this is my ticket to dishonorable discharge, right there,_ but oh, also, _no, wait a second, he’s actually worth something, this Kaffee, he’s not a joke after all, and do I trust him enough to risk it? perhaps I do,_ and _conduct unbecoming,_ and _you’re a smarter man than that, Jack,_ he **_takes. it. all._** Every little treacherous humiliating thought that paralyzes Danny with its existence, and with it all in mind Jack still drops to his knees in front of Danny, unzips his fly and takes his cock into his mouth.

Takes him slow, so slow Danny wants to scream, or maybe weep, lets out a whimper, but it comes out as a gasp because Danny’s afraid to unclench his throat, and he is gripping Jack’s counter for dear life, his legs aren’t supporting him that good, and his back is gonna bruise for sure. And Jack takes his time, like he’s punishing him maybe, which Danny wouldn’t put past him, his mouth is agonizingly unhurried, but firm, and in control, and Danny thinks he’s going to come every second this continues, and every second Jack is not letting him, oh Danny’s definitely gonna cry. His body does not belong to him anymore, it belongs to Jack, Jack owns him, and Jack’s hands own him, and Jack’s mouth around his cock, they own him.

He comes like an unstoppable tidal wave, nails digging into Jack’s furniture, and “Fuck! Oh fuck!” he coughs out, drained and wrung out, and his legs are shuddering, so it’s not that surprising when moments later they are both on their knees on the floor, and Danny’s kissing Jack again with needy desperation and relief and tenderness, and a lot of other unknowable things. He can taste himself on Jack’s tongue, he realizes, and it should be shocking and repellent but it isn’t, not in the slightest. He pulls his pants up, tugs himself back in, and then works Jack’s zipper swiftly, and Jack’s aching cock springs into his hand. Jack clutches at his arms again, drops his forehead against Danny’s shoulder and he’s thrusting stiffly as Danny curls his hand around Jack’s hot pulsing flesh, and it is exhilarating to be able to bring someone this much relief and this much pleasure, and he doesn’t toy with Jack at all, he jerks him off like he means business, to the coaxing rhythm of his soft breathless _Yes_ es. And he can’t keep his mouth off of him.

He kisses Jack’s jaw, and his neck, his collar bone, kisses him on his pectorals, and on his abdomen, and then sprawls himself on the floor, going flat on his stomach, in what must be a very unsexy pose, and licks the underside of Jack’s cock. Because he can. He wants to. Doesn’t know that he can handle a real blow job, although he suddenly, intensely, wants to try. It will have to wait though, and for now he keeps kissing Jack in all the places he can reach while his hand pumps him with force and determination until Jack is spurting all over his hand in white streaks, and Danny catches the back of his neck with his free hand and cradles him while he rides out his orgasm.

Their foreheads rest together, and he wants to say so many things, but Jack crumples bonelessly on the floor, and Danny thinks it can wait, it can all wait, whatever it is that sits in his chest, and in his gut, and at the back of his tongue, it’s not going anywhere, and neither are they. He tugs a dishtowel down from the counter and wipes his hand, then tosses it away before flopping next to Jack ungracefully. His head meets the floor with a thunk.

“So. That about covers that conversation you wanted to have, right?” he asks breezily and out of breath.

“No,” Jack groans. “No. Silence,” he orders. His voice is low and scratchy. “First rule. There’s not gonna be any talk during the—” he waves his hand vaguely.

“The _afterglow_?” Danny snorts and bumps his shoulder against Jack’s.

“Shut up,” Jack murmurs.

“Why?” Danny arches an eyebrow. “You trying imagine I’m not here?” He jabs Jack under the ribs with his elbow.

“Ow, fuck!” Jack howls, and glares at him, and another snort escapes Danny, full-throated and loud.

“Sorry,” he shakes his head, even though he’s not, “I’ll try to be silent, I—” he splutters again, laughing. “No—Sorry—give me a moment—” he turns on his stomach and buries his grinning mouth in Jack’s ribs until Jack groans in defeat and frees his arm, curls it around Danny, and Danny scoots closer and allows himself to be pulled onto Jack’s chest.

Jack’s laughing too, he realizes then, feels it resonating through him, and there they are, just two idiots, laughing at God knows what, _nothing,_ they’re laughing at _nothing_ , and it has been so exhausting, and draining that Danny’s laugh quickly turns hysterical, acquires a desperate edge, and he feels the urge to crawl up higher and kiss Jack again. Just one more time, deep and greedy, and so he does, and it is like a conversation happening with their lips, like saying all the things that are bursting out of him with more force than any laugh. Things like _I can’t keep my mouth off of you,_ and _I could stay like this forever,_ and most importantly, _Don’t ever tell me to go._

“You know that this is like—I’m not gonna be this patient the next time,” he says, clearing his throat.

He wants Jack to say, _“Next time?”_ sardonically and to reply that yes, there will be a next time, and not another one of _“Danny. We can’t.”_

“This was you being patient?” Jack asks instead, and chuckles lazily. It rumbles deep in his chest.

“Well, yeah. Naturally,” Danny says and crawls almost entirely on top of him, hooking his leg across and stretching up. Jack huffs in protest, but bears his weight easily, and his hands come up to rest on Danny’s flanks. “I wanna be messy, and not plan, and just let myself do whatever pops into my head,” he says, traces the outline of Jack’s jaw with his mouth as he speaks.

Very quietly Jack says, “Sounds good.” It’s the single most sweetest phrase Danny has heard in his entire life. He settles into Jack’s side again, surprisingly comfortable considering that they’re still playing carpet on Jack’s kitchen.

“You wanna, maybe, relocate somewhere more comfortable?” he says.

“In a minute,” Jack mutters quietly, his arm tightening across Danny’s waist, and Danny must admit it does feel pretty good as it is, this moment, and maybe they shouldn’t disturb it, and he says nothing else.

 

 

~***~

 

 

Danny doesn’t really get babies, like, he figures, he will love his child, but it’s something in life you have to be _in_ to understand, to bond with. As it is, babies make him nervous, especially when people start offering him to hold them like it will change him, like he should be pissing himself at the chance to do it, but what he’s pissing himself about is the fear to drop the little bundle of kicking legs and toothless smiles. Sam, bless him, knows him well enough to never have asked. Danny sometimes thinks that their entire friendship has been preparing Sam for fatherhood: God knows, Danny needs constant looking after.

“She’s adorable,” Jo smiles at Sam fondly.

“She’s gonna be a lawyer,” Danny grins. “First word out of her baby mouth, and it’s a _No._ The child’s born for arguing. _No, Your Honor, my client’s not guilty!_ ”

Sam makes a skeptical face. “Right, but for the next fifteen years it’s gonna be, _No, Daddy, I did not do the thing, I have no idea what you’re talking about, honest._ ”

“Swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?” Danny laughs, and they snort.

So, yeah. Danny doesn’t get babies, but all in all, Lily _is_ pretty cute.

The clock is slowly creeping towards eight, and he gets up. “Time for me to bid you all farewell,” he says cheerfully.

“Nancy?” Sam bellows. “Come say goodbye to Danny, he’s leaving.”

“Already?” his wife fusses from the kitchen.

“Yeah, already?” Jo echoes. “It’s Lily’s bed-time, not yours.”

“He has a date tonight,” Sam says with a dry grin. Danny couldn’t quite keep a lid on that, but that’s _all_ Sam gets to know for the foreseeable future.

Danny nods, winking at Jo conspiratorially. “Think I’m gonna get lucky,” he says in a wicked, bragging tone.

Jo doesn’t take the comment seriously even for a second and only looks at him, unbothered and unsurprised and with a little glad smile, and he is _relieved_ to have gotten to this point with her, where it isn’t awkward, isn’t tense, is genial.

“Wear matching socks,” she offers, a little sardonic, and he laughs.

 

 

~***~

 

 

“They are gonna stonewall you,” Jack says dismissively without looking up from his paperwork. His workspace is technically a no-Danny zone: because Danny’s borrowing and filing habits are a mess, and Jack has a system, has neatly stacked rows of documents, and threatens to buy a desk with a lockable lid every week to keep Danny out. Danny, naturally, ignores him and barges into Jack’s room only to start dressing in front of his mirror. Jack eventually gives up and tosses the pen on the desk and simply watches him with an annoyed frown.

Danny isn’t doing it to annoy him, though. What he wants is to simply see Jack like this: loose and unshackled in the safe space behind close doors, hard at work, but wearing an unflattering domestic pair of pants, and he’s missed a button on his shirt when he threw it on this morning, slipping out of their bed. It’s skewed and creasing over his stomach now, and if he noticed (which he probably has), he’s letting it slide. He’s drinking coffee from Danny’s Harvard mug, and light is falling on him through the loose blind slats, and he looks absurdly _beautiful_ like that.

Danny keeps it all to himself. Instead he makes a fuss about the whole NASA thing.

“They’re not,” he protests. No one will impugn his ability to charm his way through an investigation.

“Are, too.”

“Stop. They’re _not_ gonna stonewall me,” Danny repeats, staring at Jack’s reflection in the mirror. “It’s the NASA. They love us Navy boys, we make their best astronauts!”

Jack looks at his watch. “I have a meeting at thirteen hundred hours. Be sure to call and cry about them _stonewalling_ you _before_ that,” he says, in that infuriatingly patronizing tone of his, like Danny is the most ignorant person in the world. Danny wants to smack the superiority out of him, or kiss it off of him, most likely, and his fingers lose count of the buttons at the thought.

“Neil fucking Armstrong was a naval officer!” Danny points out ardently. “They’re gonna love me.”

“And John Glenn’s a Colonel of the United States _Marines_. _And_ he’s a Senator now,” Jack replies with a tone of calm superiority. “You can’t win.”

“He was like fifth! _Fifth_ guy up there. After Shepard! Who _was_ _Navy!_ ”

“And after Grissom who was Air Force,” Jack shrugs. “And none of ‘em is a Senator, by the way. This argument going somewhere?”

“How do I look?” Danny asks instead, turning to face Jack, and he knows he looks like any other day, but he wants to see that tiny moment, that tiny lurch, when Jack is looking at him, and sees the whole of him, the full of him, that tiny second where he blinks wrong, and Danny sees the movement of his throat, the intake of breath, or some other barely perceptible shift which Jack will force himself still and say something completely menial and dry, but Danny will see it and know. And they don’t even have to say anything.

Jack clears his throat and gets up, comes up to him slowly and shakes the invisible dust off Danny’s shoulders, and his fingers linger on him a bit, warm and sure.

“If I recall correctly, the words you’re looking for are _‘very lady-like’_ ,” he says waspishly, and Danny rolls his eyes and scowls.

“Oh thank you!” he exclaims, smacking his arm. “Bite me. You’re just jealous that I get to go to NASA, and you’re stuck at home. You know what? _You’re_ the wife!” he folds his arms on his chest, feeling contrary and unreasonably gleeful.

Jack snorts and shakes his head, distinctly amused and unamused at the same time, and that makes no sense, but on Jack Ross it absolutely does. His hands are still fiddling with Danny’s collar.

“Please, Danny. I am the smart and the patient one,” he says. “I am _definitely_ the wife.”

Danny’s laugh spills out of him in an unexpected, honest burst, and he bends his head and looks at Jack through his lashes demurely, which leaves Jack a little at a loss, like he still hasn’t figured out what to do with Danny when he’s being like this, toying with everything that Jack has spent most of his adult life afraid of, and Danny steps into Jack’s space and _has_ to kiss him, his all too serious mouth.

He pushes Jack back into his chair and reaches over his shoulder to flick on the radio. The station is playing Motown classics, and Danny joins in the chorus of _Jackson 5._ Jack pulls a protesting face, shaking his head. “No. Mhm-hm,” and Danny grins and howls _“baby give me one more chance”_ together with teenage Michael, and does a little ridiculous dance, and Jack groans and covers his face.

“You are so embarrassing,” he mutters. “This is why I can’t take you anywhere. You’re unbelievable.”

“I _know_ ,” Danny agrees wickedly, and brushes his mouth over Jack’s lips briefly, catching him off guard and then sauntering off, leaving him in open-mouthed aggravation.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says softly.

“Tonight,” Jack nods, and there is a whole another universe in this one word, their whole life collected in two syllables.

Jack still looks like he can’t decide if he wants to punch Danny in the teeth or kiss him dry. And Danny is completely fine with that.


End file.
